Here's a New Year's resolution: Take control of your online presence. When I say online presence, I do not simply mean a personal website—though that is a prudent place to begin. Consider also the venues where you share your work, cultivate social and professional networks, and solicit contributions from colleagues.

For students, educators, and independent scholars, Academia.eduoften serves as the de facto Web presence, research repository, and social network. I have a profile there, as does just about everyone I know. However, as Kathleen Fitzpatrick—director of scholarly communication at the Modern Language Association—underscores in a recent blog post, relying upon Academia.edu alone may not be a shrewd investment. Despite its .edu domain (registered prior to government restrictions), this for-profit platform is backed by millions of dollars from venture capitalists. Fitzpatrick worries that this profit motive may endanger user content. She writes, "Either academics who are currently contributing their work to this space will have to pay to continue to access it, or the work that they have contributed will somehow be mined for sale, whether to advertisers or other interested parties."

Whether or not you share Fitzpatrick's concerns, there is good reason to look beyond Academia.edu: Free, open-source alternatives abound.

To take control of your online presence is not only to create a website or profile, but to own it. Investing in open-source projects doesn't only mean that you get to keep your data, but that you can manipulate it as you wish. This week, I share some of my favorite tools, platforms, and services for creating and collaborating online. Some, such as WordPress, ought to be familiar; others, such as the Neatline plugin, are perhaps less so. My goal is not to wade too deeply into the esoteric, but rather to preview practical tools you can use today.

Presence and CollaborationChances are that you have visited a WordPress site even if you have not created one yourself. According to its About page, WordPress powers about a quarter of the web. As a free and open-source content management system (CMS), WordPress serves everything from personal blogs to enterprise websites such as the Microsoft News Center. In addition to an intuitive design, WordPress is well-suited to personal websites because it grows with your ambitions. In fact, with a vast library of plugins, you can even transform your website into a virtual collaboratorium.

Developed at the Institute for the Future of the Book, CommentPress is a plugin through which writers can crowdsource the peer-review process. Billed as a tool for "social texts in social contexts," CommentPress enables readers to comment paragraph-by-paragraph in textual margins. It's like commenting on a Google Doc, but designed for the public at large.

To take collaboration a step further, administrators can install Commons in a Box (CBOX), to create a shared space where users can communicate, share files, and build out extensive wikis. Created by the City University of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center, CBOX provides much of the functionality that educators expect from a learning management system (LMS) without relying upon proprietary platforms like Blackboard. In addition to serving large organizations, such as the Modern Language Association, CBOX can also serve educators. For example, in his review for the Journal of Digital Humanities, Chuck Rybak praises CBOX as a tool for outreach: "Instead of being trapped in the cul-de-sac, I wanted students to see their projects emerging within larger discussions and communities, thus allowing them to reflect on their place in, and relationship with, the humanities in general." Whereas a traditional blog might function as one such cul-de-sac, plugins such as CommentPress and CBOX transform WordPress into an online canopy.

Exhibitions and TimelinesWhile the WordPress ecosystem is well-suited to textual exchange, Omeka and Scalar are ideal for visual media. A project of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, Omeka is comparable to WordPress in that it is open-source, relies upon a common set of standards, and enables librarians, curators, and enthusiasts to build online exhibits using a generous collection of plugins and themes.

Both individuals and prominent organizations have used Omeka to serve up electronic exhibitions. The New York Public Library uses it to host its Treasures of the New York Public Library, as does the Newberry Library for its Digital Exhibitions. The September 11 Digital Archive, which I examined in a previous column, has also migrated to Omeka. Moreover, thanks to a trove of plugins, Omeka can be refashioned to serve other ends. For example, Neatline, created by the Scholars' Lab at the University of Virginia Library, allows users to tell stories using maps and timelines. (Reference their demos page for examples.)

Since I reviewed it a couple years ago, Scalar has matured as a platform for born-digital scholarship. Customizability, interoperability, and a unique structure—users can chart non-linear paths though Web content—have earned Scalar some celebrity as a multi-modal Web publishing platform. As with Omeka and WordPress, Scalar is free and open-source, a project of USC's Alliance for Networking Visual Culture. A recent release (v2) brought a redesigned user interface, new page editor, new page layouts, and greater mobile support. As evidenced by their showcase page, users have created impressive projects in both versions of the platform.

Hosted and Unhosted ServicesEach of the platforms I have introduced are available hosted and unhosted. WordPress offers a free blogging platform, WordPress.com, which users can even upgrade with a custom domain; as WordPress makes clear on its support page, the unhosted ".org" version enables you to "get your hands dirty" with custom themes and plugins (e.g. CommentPress). Similarly, Omeka is available in a ".net" version which offers free hosting (half a gigabyte) for one site with limited customization (14 plugins and five themes). If you want more sites, storage, plugins, or themes, Omeka offers several paid plans. Scalar is available with free hosting, though users can avoid upload caps (2MB per file) if they choose to self-host.

Self-hosting provides the most flexibility whether you intend to use WordPress, Omeka, or Scalar. My colleague, Jeff Wilson, has documented some excellent managed web-hosting services for WordPress, in particular. Some of those services, such as Editors' Choice InMotion Web Hosting, start at just a few dollars per month. I personally like Reclaim Hosting, which offers shared hosting plans starting at $25 annually with free domain registration. What I like about Reclaim is that users can install Web applications for WordPress, Omeka, and Scalar via an online control panel.

Finally, if you only want to host a small website, you can always use a public repository on GitHub. While the URL is a bit unwieldy (http://username.github.io.) public hosting is free, and GitHub offers a great way to share project source code.

This account is by no means comprehensive, and I encourage readers to share other free, open-source tools, platforms, and services via the comments thread below. Just about everyone has some kind of online presence, but not all platforms are created equal. In addition to choosing tools for their ease of use, scholars, educators, and autodidacts would do well to lead by example and to consider platforms that promote access and collaboration.

About the Author

As a contributing editor, William Fenton specializes in research and education software. In addition to his role at PCMag.com, William is also a Teaching Fellow and Director of the Writing Center at Fordham University Lincoln Center. To learn more about his research interests, visit his homepage or follow him on Academia.edu, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

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